For the second time in recent weeks, a Louisiana senator is blocking Senate confirmation of an Obama administration nominee to protest the slow pace of permits for offshore drilling in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

This time it is Republican Sen. David Vitter, who is holding up the nomination of Scott Doney to be chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Just before Thanksgiving, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., dropped her nearly two-month hold on Obama's nomination of Jack Lew to head the Office of Management and Budget. She released her hold after getting Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to meet with industry officials, though later she said she wasn't satisfied with his response.

In a letter to the president Thursday, Vitter said he is requesting two actions by the administration before he'll drop his hold on Doney. One would be to make two key advisers, Carol Browner, the assistant to the president for energy and climate change, and Steve Black, counselor to Salazar, available for a Small Business Committee hearing to testify about the federal moratorium on deepwater drilling, which officially ended in October.

Good for Vitter.
This BS regulation legislating via pimped agencies (add EPA) has to stop.
There’s no semblance of science in how they’re dicking with our environment. If this nominee is another socialist plant(any doubt?)then we just propogate loony driven policies.

4
posted on 12/10/2010 9:36:33 AM PST
by bossmechanic
(If all else fails, hit it with a hammer)

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